Time for Saturday night to rise from the dead

KIDNAPPED -- Episode 105 "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" -- Pictured: Delroy Lindo as Latimer King -- NBC Photo: Larry Riley FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY -- NOT FOR RESALE -- DO NOT ARCHIVE

KIDNAPPED -- Episode 105 "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" -- Pictured: Delroy Lindo as Latimer King -- NBC Photo: Larry Riley FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY -- NOT FOR RESALE -- DO NOT ARCHIVE

Photo: Larry Riley

Time for Saturday night to rise from the dead

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When NBC gave up on the struggling serial drama "Kidnapped" recently, instead of killing it immediately -- the way CBS did with its serialized failure, "Smith" -- the network cut its order to 13 episodes and dumped it on Saturday night.

Saturday night. Television's graveyard. And one of the most oddly programmed nights on broadcast television. No network wants to launch a series there. It's home to ugly-cousin newsmagazines like "48 Hours Mystery" and "Dateline," or misfits like "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted," which have thrived, like zombies, on the Night Nobody Wants.

CBS, which was the last network to valiantly make a go of Saturday night, no longer makes the effort. Historically one of the great nights of television, Saturdays slid downhill as more viewers either began going out or rebelling against whatever network fare was there (what came first -- a lack of audience or lame shows?).

Saturday nights were also the last bastion of the "Saturday Movie," where big feature films were cut up and filled with commercials and digested by people who never went out. Now? Netflix. And cable channels like Starz and Encore completely devoted to major feature films. (When networks do put feature films on Saturdays, it's almost like an afterthought, and the movies, whether they are "The Bourne Identity" or "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" -- action for men, mystical thrills for the entire family! -- almost always tank in the ratings.)

What became of Saturday nights -- before "Kidnapped" was sent to be burned off there -- was the network equivalent of throwing in the towel:

Reruns.

Which, as it turns out, is not a bad idea at all. But the networks are executing it poorly. Before suggesting some alternatives on how to save Saturday nights, first this sad little update:

NBC pulled "Kidnapped" off Saturday. Now the series will apparently wind up (and die) online. It's the ultimate in disrespect: "You're too lousy for the worst night of television of the entire week. Now go into the ether."

But there's a lesson to be learned from "Kidnapped." Unless it's the oddball success story of "Cops" and "AMW" -- and that is a very limited kind of success, indeed -- people don't want to watch new programming on Saturdays. And they especially don't want to watch scripted programming. There hasn't been a Saturday night scripted comedy or drama on any major broadcast network since 2003. And every season it becomes more of a dumping ground.

Now, you can make an argument that this is a learned behavior for the viewing audience -- that it has been told to expect the dregs on that night and therefore won't turn up when networks toss some chum there. It's a dead fishing hole. Just ask CBS, which put "Hack" and "The District" there in 2003. ABC had similar results -- bad -- when it dropped "L.A. Dragnet" on Saturday night that season. Were those good shows? No. But the networks were at least making an effort.

This season, ABC has offered up college football; CBS and NBC are airing repeats. But repeats need not be a word spoken in disgust, or a programming decision made mostly to fill space. Cable television has successfully adopted the idea of multiple airings -- windows of opportunity for harried viewers who may not be where a programmer wants them (on their backsides, on the couch) on the night and at the time the programmer chooses.

But the networks are going about reruns all wrong. CBS once tried to get thematic, making Saturday a block of crime series reruns. But because crime and punishment are pretty much the only thing CBS programs of late, that's kind of redundant. Besides, shows like "Cold Case" or "Close to Home" do well enough on their own. Most of what CBS does, in fact, seems to have the Midas touch.

Except for "Smith." And last season's darling "Love Monkey," a critically praised series that had no dead bodies or ties to the government and couldn't find an audience on CBS, so it was killed. Why no Saturday reruns for it?

For its part, NBC often repeats one of the "Law & Order" franchises/spin-offs on Saturdays. These are series that are doing relatively fine. They are established. They don't need to be rerun on Saturdays. And yet NBC entertainment President Kevin Reilly, a smart, experienced programmer, recently said he was going to stick with some of the network's acclaimed, ratings-starved freshman series like "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," "Friday Night Lights" and "30 Rock." He's brainstorming a way to save them.

Uh, hey, Kevin: How about repeating them on Saturday nights? There have been dumber ideas.

Now, undoubtedly, Reilly and his team have thought of this and dismissed it. And here's why: Series that are underperforming on nights when people actually watch television, namely Sunday to Friday, will severely underperform on Saturday night.

Well, sure. That's the conventional wisdom. A repeat of "Law & Order" on Saturday night would probably double what a repeat of "Studio 60" would do on a Saturday night. More viewers, more money for advertising. It's how the world works.

But there's no vision in that model. Viewers love cable channels that air a show multiple times throughout the week because it fits their busy schedule. It creates opportunities. Broadcast networks can't do this because they don't have the space during the week and running a Tuesday night show on a Thursday night only confuses viewers. The networks have a history of shifting series around with little or no notice, and it freaks out the normal folk at home. Uh-oh, has my favorite series moved? This is not an issue on cable because viewers understand the wisdom, they get the pattern.

If, however, Saturday was dubbed Struggling Show Repeat Night and all or most of the networks participated, you'd have a new paradigm in broadcast television. Hell, even if only half participated, just the notion that you could create a learned response in viewers -- Saturday night is your chance to catch an episode of "Acclaimed Series X," or "Water Cooler Show Y" that you might have missed -- a new pattern would emerge.

Just this week, NBC pulled "Studio 60" from its Monday 10 p.m. slot for a special airing of "Friday Night Lights." Now, the old-school programming logic behind the move is pretty clear. The high school football drama, based on the book and the movie, wasn't doing well on Tuesday nights. Let's hope for a better sampling on a different night and time. Sure enough -- more people tuned in Monday night than they had the previous Tuesday night. Great news.

Except that it panicked fans of "Studio 60," already worried that their show is doomed. Worse, NBC reran the "Friday Night Lights" episode in its normal slot the next day and ratings were awful -- less than those a week earlier in the same time slot.

So, who benefited? What was the moral of the switch? This is not the way to run a network -- or save a series -- in the modern era.

And Saturday night might not be the answer, either. But no concerted effort has been made to try something new and different on a night deemed so lousy that our nation's fifth broadcast network -- the CW -- doesn't even program a single show on Saturdays.

Advertising allegedly influences people, correct? How about some promos for Saturday night as Second Chance Night? How about See It for the First Time Saturday? Wouldn't "30 Rock" or "Studio 60" or "Help Me Help You" or "The Class" perhaps benefit from additional exposure?

Nobody needs to see another "Law & Order" repeat. They need a chance to catch up on the 30 series that broadcast networks dumped on them to start the fall. They need a chance to exhale -- and sample.